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Abstract
Social death is on many occasions used too broadly by academics in several different disciplines, creating ambiguity around its application. Conceptual clarification is needed, not least because of the importance of the empirical topics to which the concept has been applied, such as genocide, slavery and dementia. Analysis of repeatedly occurring structural similarities in diverse studies of social death reveals three underlying notions: a loss of social identity, a loss of social connectedness and losses associated with disintegration of the body. The article concludes firstly, that social death is a multifaceted phenomenon with a single conceptual framework; secondly, that in order to preserve the concept's theoretical potential it should only be used for the most extreme circumstances whereby most or all of the key facets are severely compromised and/or lost; thirdly, that social death might be usefully seen as the opposite of well-being, so that well-being and social death each clarify the meaning of the other.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the many scholars, friends, the general public and anonymous reviewers who critically challenged her thoughts during the development of this theoretical proposal and to the Centre for Death and Society for its ongoing support.
Notes on contributor
Jana Králová is becoming a sociologist with an interest in the concept of social death. Starting with old age and end of life care, her theoretical work has developed to explore the quality of life of the socially abandoned and discriminated against, whether due to their race, origin, gender, religion, physical/mental impairment, economic failure, political positioning or a combination of these. She is currently doing doctoral research at the Centre for Death and Society.